Recently, I wrote about the healing process that’s as necessary for emotional wounds as it is for physical wounds. I made the parallel between a gunshot victim and the victim of abuse for the sake of the immediacy and deadliness of not treating the wound, but it occurs to me that there’s another parallel to be made, one that came to mind today after I was left with the impression by a mental health professional that she thought maybe I was a little too positive. (What? That’s a problem?)
There is a constellation of mental health and behavioral problems that experts expect to see in the lives of abuse victims, particularly sexual abuse victims. These problems serve as they symptoms that experts use to demonstrate or prove that the victim has been abused in courts of law, particularly when it’s difficult to find physical proof for whatever reason (for instance, if a little girl is a gymnast, she may have broken her hymen in a fall on a balance beam, making it harder to prove that she was the victim of ongoing sexual abuse. Or if the abuse was by making the child pose for pornographic pictures, or exposing them to pornographic images, then there wouldn’t be physical evidence on the child’s body, but there’s still going to be a psychological and emotional toll on the child).
Growing up and going to therapy for the abuse, I learned about these problems. I was prepared for them, watchful for them, so that I could combat them. I have never wanted to be another statistic, never wanted to be another number on a chart that someone could dutifully tick off and pass over and be done with. So when I learned that depression is a common problem, I watched for it. I learned that sexual abuse victims tend to go to one of two extremes of sexual expression… very repressed, reserved, almost incapable of expressing themselves at all (the “prude”) or over-expressive, very free, even to the point of being self-destructive with their sexuality (the “slut”). I watched for this, trying to walk a middle ground.
More, it wasn’t just that I was trying to find any middle ground. I was very much invested in finding a well-defined, easily followed path that would provide me with the solid mental health foundation that my history of abuse had robbed from me. I didn’t want to find a middle ground between normal and abused… I wanted to find healthy. I wanted to find the place that was the right balance of sober and silly, of freedom and service, of grief over what I’d lost and victory over what I’d gained in the process. It had to exist.
I blundered for years, and I wouldn’t say that I’ve found that place now, but I would venture so far as to say that I’m closer to it than I have ever been in my life, closer to the place of balance and healthy than anyone would have ever believed possible for anyone, much less for a survivor of abuse… even less for all of the abuse I endured.
That brings me to the second portrait of a physical illness that we can compare emotional traumas to. Just as I’ve never been shot, neither have I ever had cancer, but I’ve watched as it stole loved ones from our family, and I’ve watched as loved ones fought it successfully. Unlike a gunshot, which is an immediate threat and kills swiftly, cancer is a slower threat, growing insidiously in the body, turning your own cells against you, your body betraying you from the inside out. Sometimes, you can catch it early and intervene before it has a chance to spread and do too much damage, and in those cases, you have a great chance of survival. But if you don’t find the cancer before it’s had a chance to grow and spread, then your chances of overcoming shrink radically.
Abuse is the same way. If it’s found early, then people can intervene, interrupting the pattern of emotional and psychological trauma before it has a chance to do as much harm as if the abuse continues. But the longer abuse continues, the more forms of abuse a child endures, the more difficult and complicated it becomes to overcome the destructive patterns that children establish just to survive. They’ve learned to lie to protect themselves, so they have to unlearn deception as a habit. They may have learned theft to provide for themselves, so they have to learn to trust others to provide for their needs. They’ve learned not to trust anyone, so they have to learn how one even begins to take the steps to trust before they can actually trust. They’ve learned fear and pain; they have to unlearn that to learn love.
So here I am, a teenager, understanding the challenge I face, and yet determined to fight. Beloved, how am I any different than a cancer patient being told that there’s almost no chance of surviving this tumor, but who refuses to give up? I know the odds are against me ever finding normal. I know the odds are against me ever finding healthy. I know the challenge I’m up against. Just like that cancer patient, the chances of me ever getting out from underneath of all of this are slim. But just like that cancer patient, I don’t want to give up. I have something to fight for. At the time, it was my sisters. But that was enough. It gave me a reason to keep going.
And because, in all that my mother did wrong, she did one thing right, I had my path. I had found my road to healthy. She kept us in church. Now, I believe my mom did that for selfish reasons; churches tend to be generous to single moms raising daughters in need, and the more involved with a church, the more generous they’re willing to be for a while… they see you as one of their own that they’re taking care of. Now, after a while, they realize they’re being used, or they see the situation the kids are in, and then Mom would move on… but it still served to keep me in church.
Now, I know lots of people would look at my situation and say “How could you go to God after all He let you go through?” The truth is that, because I was taught from the time I was little that we all have sinned, I never saw God as responsible for what was happening to me. On top of that, I saw that the rest of my mother’s family wasn’t like her, that my father’s family wasn’t like her, and my father and his wife were frequently trying to teach me that I was responsible for the choices I make, and not to repeat the behaviors I saw in my mother. It was an intentional act on their part, and it worked. Add to that the fact that I was hungry for something that would provide me with that path to healthy instead of damaged, and church was water to the parched, food for the starving, and medicine to a cancer patient out of options.
In church, I met people who loved freely. They gave of themselves and invested in me. They were genuinely interested in me and in seeing that I found my healthy. They hurt with me, they grieved with me, and they celebrated with me. Church was an escape from the hell I lived in at home, and they worked hard to make sure that it was always available to me. It’s also where I met my adoptive parents.
But church wasn’t just the people, though they were a huge part. It was also the teaching. It was the message printed in the book I had grown up with, that I had started learning from when I was tiny, that those people were living out to me. It was the message in the sermon every Sunday. It was the salve to aching wounds, the challenge to wrong-headed attitudes, and the path to healthy I was looking for.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” -Matthew 11:28
Oh, Beloved, I was so tired. And the burden of abuse is so heavy. Do you know what an assurance that was to me? And that’s just what I unpacked out of there the first time. There was so much more I’d take from that verse later… but that’s for another time.
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. -James 1:5
For someone looking for answers, to be told that it was there if I only asked? Oh, Beloved, I wasn’t used to getting what I asked for. But God never failed me. When I asked, He answered.
I could sit here and pull out verses all day long. Then Ten Commandments directed my behavior; how I should treat God and others. The Beatitudes in Matthew were the Be-Attitudes… the attitudes you should have in life. The fruit of the spirit that demonstrate themselves in the life of a believer. 1 Corinthians 13, that talks about Love, and how we should behave if we want to be loving. The rest of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus took the Ten Commandments and illustrated not just the letter of the law defined in them, but explained how to comprehend and live out the spirit of them, too. And then there were the verses that comforted me, that told me who I was in the eyes of God… Isaiah 43, that called me precious, and beloved. Zephaniah 3:17, that told me God sings in joy for me, and watches over me. The 23rd Psalm, where God is my shepherd, and Luke 11, where I am the sheep he seeks out and celebrates with a party.
Beloved, that book told me about a God who had loved since before I was born, who had been watching over me and protecting me even while I was in harm’s way, who had a plan for my life and had been unfolding it for me all along. I found a God who put off immortality, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and even innocence when he took on sin on the cross, in order to put on humanity that He might understand what it meant to be human, and then to win us back to Himself. I saw humility exemplified… for love of one that had been so broken by abuse that she believed she was unlovable. In that book, in God, Beloved, I found the healing I needed.
My middle ground, the path I follow that I call healthy, is the one in that book, the one that God walked for us when he put on humanity. I don’t follow it perfectly; as long as I draw breath on this earth, I will make mistakes and be imperfect. But my goal is to be like Christ, to see people through His eyes, to love them with His heart, to give as freely and generously as He gave, and to leave this world and the people I meet better than they were when I found them.
Let’s go back to that cancer patient, facing a terminal diagnosis. They’ve been told they don’t have long to live, and there’s almost nothing that can be done. They find a medicine that is in the early stages of trials, and they try it. It works. Beyond all expectations, this medicine does what nothing else could have done. It shouldn’t have worked, but it does, and they go into complete remission. There is no sign of the cancer anywhere. Sure, there’s still scars where it was and where other treatments failed, and they remember having it… but the cancer is gone.
How do you think that patient is going to feel? Depressed? Or maybe they’ll be happy at the news that they get to live with their family longer, that death isn’t coming for them tomorrow, like they expected? Do you think they might get excited by life again? Do you think all the depression that came with facing the end of their life might begin to fade when they’re given it back?
Beloved, that’s how I feel. I faced a constellation of problems thanks to the abuse I survived. No one expected normal from that outcome. But like the cancer patient who wouldn’t give up, who tried something radical, I found healing instead of death. I found strength instead of weakness. I was given normal back, Beloved, I was given my life back. Why wouldn’t that make me a happy, positive, joyful person? I’m partying with the Shepherd, and I’ve decided I’m not going to let anyone rain on that. After all, it’s my party… I’ll celebrate if I want to!
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